It’s no surprise that we love CAUCHEMAR here at Iron Fist. The Montreal metal machine are fronted by the one and only Annick Giroux, author of our World Downfall column. But nepotism be damned, even if Annick wasn’t part of the family we’d still be a sucker of their Sabbath meets Mercyful Fate meets Sortilege meets Blue Oyster Cult vibes. With a new album ‘Chappelle Ardente’ out now we look back to Iron Fist #6 (Summer 2013) when Dave Sherwood had a dangerous meeting with the band around the release of their Nuclear War Now! Productions debut ‘Tenebrario’

We know you as our world correspondent, but not for your own music – tell us about Cauchemar Annick: “Cauchemar started as a doom metal project between myself and the guitarist, François [Patry]. At first, I wanted to play bass, but we couldn’t find a vocalist so I decided to sing instead. We were aiming to play ‘trad’ doom but our heavy metal influences took over and it ended up being some sort of bastard mix of heavy/doom. We recorded and released our mini-album ‘La Vierge Noire’ in 2010, and did our first three gigs in Canada afterwards. In January, 2011, myself and the guitarist … Read More

Besides knowing that Argentina was a big producer of wine and steak, I was completely ignorant of what was going on in the country before visiting it. It’s kind of embarrassing, but the only band I knew from the country was the primitive but evil demo band Retrosatan. However, I quickly found out that the country historically had some of South America’s best heavy rock and traditional metal bands, and discovered some amazing gems (notably ‘Pappos’ Blues Volumen 3‘ and V8’s ‘Luchando Por el Metal’) that have became some of my favourite albums ever. I also was shocked at the diversity of the landscapes encountered during the trip – especially the insanely beautiful multi-coloured mountains in the north of the country and its large canyons! I was not able to find many gigs to go to, or even too many albums to purchase, but I did catch the Argentinian stoner-doom band Dragonauta play a gig in Buenos Aires… at 3 in the morning, which seemed like a normal hour to play over there. Anyway, one key person I connected with while traveling in Argentina was Eric (Nocturnal Profaner of the bands Infernal Curse/Xenotaph and the editor of Baphometal fanzine). … Read More